The Nature of Colonial Education in Kenya as a Factor for the Rise of One-Race Schools; The Case of Francis Scott School (European School Nakuru), 1895-1925

Francis Scott School emerged within the wider framework of the colonial state and its educational policies for the people residing in the Kenyan colony. Colonial education in Kenya was consciously designed as a racial and hierarchical system. The colonial administration sought to use the education system to promote the aims of racial segregation and subjugation of the other races by Europeans. Essentially, the education system was intended to endorse and legitimize settler domination by offering European children a superior educational experience. Conversely, the system of colonial education in Kenya was structured to restrict Africans’ access to meaningful and transformative education, hence hindering their ascendancy in the social order. Although many studies have covered African education during the colonial period in Kenya, underscoring the limitations it faced, there exists a significant gap on how the nature of colonial education resulted into the development of schools on racial lines, particularly for non-African races. This paper examines the nature of colonial education as a factor to the establishment of Francis Scott School as a Europeans-only educational facility. The study based on the conflict theory of education to examine the necessity of the racial based schooling system and how schools for the Europeans emerged to fit into this colonial goal. The study used an ex-post facto research design, relying on both primary and secondary data sources. Primary data was obtained from documents at the Kenya National Archival, while secondary materials consisted of scholarly books and journals. Data analysis was conducted through reviewing documents, analyzing content, and theoretical reflection, by purposive and snowball sampling procedures. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of Kenya’s colonial history by documenting the educational experiences of settler communities. The findings are useful to both historians of education and colonialism as well as to contemporary education policy makers in deepening their understanding of the legacies of racialized educational structures.